<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>R: US GDP per capita with presidents and wars</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="R.css" />
</head><body>

<table width="100%" summary="page for USGDPpresidents"><tr><td>USGDPpresidents</td><td style="text-align: right;">R Documentation</td></tr></table>

<h2>
US GDP per capita with presidents and wars
</h2>

<h3>Description</h3>

<p>It is commonly claimed that Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) did 
not end the Great Depression:  World War II (WW2) did.  
This is supported by the 10.6 percent growth per year in 
real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita seen in the 
standard GDP estimates from 1940 to 1945.  It is also 
supported by the rapid decline in unemployment during 
the war.  
</p>
<p>However, no comparable growth spurts in GDP per capita 
catch the eye in a plot of log(GDP per capita) from 
1790 to 2015, whether associated with a war or not, 
using data from Measuring Worth.  The only other 
features of that plot that seem visually comparable are 
the economic disaster of Herbert Hoover's presidency 
(when GDP per capital fell by 10 percent per year, 
1929-1932), the impressive growth of the US economy 
during the first seven years of Franklin Roosevelt's
presidency (6.4 percent per year, 1933-1940), and the 
post-World War II recession (when GDP per capita fell by 
7.9 percent per year, 1945-1947).  (NOTE:  The web
site for Measuring Worth, 
<code>https://measuringworth.com/</code> still works, 
but is not currently maintained to current internet
security standards.  Therefore, the link is 
provided here in text but not as a not link.)
</p>
<p>Closer inspection of this plot suggests that the US 
economy has generally grown faster after FDR than 
before.  This might plausibly be attributed to 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes">
&quot;The Keynesian Ascendancy 1939-1979&quot;</a>.  
</p>
<p>Unemployment dropped during the First World War as it 
did during WW2.  Comparable unemployment data are not
available for the U.S. during other major wars, most
notably the 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War">American Civil War</a> and the 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican-American_War">Mexican-American War</a>.  
</p>
<p>This data set provides a platform for testing the effects 
of presidency, war, and Keynes.  It does this by 
combining the numbers for US population and real GDP per 
capital dollars from Measuring Worth with the presidency 
and a list of major wars and an estimate of the battle
deaths by year per million population.  (As noted above, 
the web address for measuring worth, 
<code>https://measuringworth.com/</code>, often gives 
security warnings but still seems to provide the 
data as before.)  
</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_the_United_States#Historical_unemployment_rate_charts">US unemployment is 
also considered.</a>
</p>


<h3>Usage</h3>

<pre>
data(USGDPpresidents)
</pre>


<h3>Format</h3>

<p>A <code>data.frame</code> containing 259 
observations on the following variables:
</p>

<dl>
<dt>Year</dt><dd> 
<p>integer: the year, c(seq(1610, 1770, 10), 1774:2015)
</p>
</dd> 
<dt>CPI</dt><dd>
<p>Numeric:  U. S. Consumer Price Index per Officer 
and Williamson (2015).  Average 1982-84 = 100.  
</p>
</dd>    
<dt>GDPdeflator</dt><dd>
<p>numeric:  Implicit price deflators for 
Gross Domestic Product with 2012s = 100 per 
Johnston and Williamson.  
</p>
</dd>
<dt>population.K</dt><dd> 
<p>integer:  US population in thousands.  
</p>
<p>Population figures for 1610 to 1780 came from 
Springston (2013).  The rest came from 
Johnston and Williamson.  (The early 
population figures reflect only the 
European settlers in the British 
colonies that eventually became the 
US.)
</p>
</dd>
<dt>realGDPperCapita</dt><dd>
<p>numeric:  real Gross Domestic Product per capita 
in 2012 dollars 
</p>
</dd> 
<dt>executive</dt><dd>
<p><code>ordered</code>:  Crown of England through 1774, 
followed by the &quot;ContinentalCongress&quot; and the 
&quot;ArticlesOfConfederation&quot; until Washington, who 
became President under the current base constitution 
in 1789.  Two nineteenth century presidents are not 
listed here (William Henry Harrison and James A. 
Garfield), because they died so soon after 
inauguration that any contribution they made to the 
economic growth of the nation might seem too slight 
to measure accurately in annual data like this;  
their contributions therefore appear combined with 
their replacements (John Tyler and Chester A. 
Arthur, respectively).  The service of two other 
presidents is officially combined here:  
&quot;Taylor-Fillmore&quot; refers to the 16 months served by 
Zachary Taylor with the 32 months of Millard 
Fillmore.  These modifications make 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama">Barack Obama</a>
number 41 on this list, even though he's the 44th 
president of the U.S.  
</p>
</dd>
<dt>war</dt><dd>
<p><code>ordered</code>:  This lists the major wars in 
US history by years involving active hostilities.  A 
war is &quot;major&quot; for present purposes if it met two 
criteria:  
</p>
<p>(1) It averaged at least 10 battle deaths per 
year per million US population.  
</p>
<p>(2) It was listed in one of two lists of wars:  
For wars since 1816, it must have appeared in the 
<a href="http://correlatesofwar.org/">Correlates of 
War</a>.  For wars between 1790 and 1815, it must 
have appeared in the Wikipedia 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States">
&quot;List of wars involving the United States&quot;</a>.  
</p>
<p>The resulting list includes a few adjustments to 
the list of wars that might come readily to mind 
for people moderately familiar with US history.    
</p>
<p>A traditional list might start with the American 
Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American 
war, the Civil War, the Spanish-American war, 
World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam.  In 
addition, the 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Indian_War">
Northwest Indian War</a> involved very roughly 30 battle 
deaths per year per million population 1785-1795.  
This compares with the roughly 100 battle deaths per 
year 1812-1815 for the 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812">
War of 1812</a>.  
</p>
<p>For present purposes, the Spanish-American War is 
combined with the lesser-known American-Philippine 
War:  The latter involved 50 percent more battle 
deaths but over a longer period of time and arguably 
with less impact on the stature of the US as a 
growing world power.  However, its magnitude suggest 
it might have impacted the US economy in a way 
roughly comparable to the Spanish-American war.  The 
two are therefore listed here together as 
&quot;Spanish-American-Philippine&quot; war.  
</p>
<p><a href="http://correlatesofwar.org/">The Correlates of 
War (COW)</a> data include multiple US uses of military
force  during the Vietnam War era.  It starts with
&quot;Vietnam Phase 1&quot;, 1961-65, with 506 battle deaths 
in the COW data base.  It includes the &quot;Second 
Laotian&quot; war phases 1 and 2, plus engagement with a
&quot;Communist Coalition&quot; and Khmer Rouge as well as 
actions in the Dominican Republic and Guatemala.  
The current <code>data.frame</code> includes 
only &quot;Vietnam&quot;, referring primarily to COW's 
&quot;Vietnam War, Phase 2&quot;, 1965-1973.  The associated
battle deaths include battle deaths from these 
other, lesser concurrent conflicts.  
</p>
<p>The COW data currently ends in 2007.  However, the 
post-2000 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq averaged 
less than 1,000 battle deaths per year or roughly 
3 battle deaths per year per million population.  
This is below the threshold of 10 battle deaths per 
year per million population.  This in turn suggests 
that any impact of those conflicts on the US economy 
might be small and difficult to estimate.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>battleDeaths</dt><dd>
<p>numeric:  Numbers of battle deaths by year estimated 
by allocating to the different years the totals 
reported for each major war in proportion to the 
number of days officially in conflict each year.  
The totals were obtained (in August-September 2015) 
from <a href="http://correlatesofwar.org/">The 
Correlates of War</a> data for conflicts since 1816 and 
from Wikipedia for previous wars, as noted above.  
</p>
</dd>
<dt>battleDeathsPMP</dt><dd>
<p>numeric:  battle deaths per million population = 
<code>1000*battleDeaths/population.K</code>.   
</p>
</dd>
<dt>Keynes</dt><dd>
<p>integer taking the value 1 between 1939 and 1979 
and 0 otherwise, as suggested by the section 
entitled &quot;The Keynesian Ascendancy 1939-1979&quot; in 
the Wikipedia article on     
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes">
John Maynard Keynes</a>. 
</p>
</dd>
<dt>unemployment</dt><dd>
<p>Estimated US unemployment rate 
</p>
</dd>
<dt>unempSource</dt><dd>
<p><code>ordered</code> giving the source for US 
unemployment:  
</p>

<dl>
<dt>1800-1889</dt><dd><p>Lebergott</p>
</dd>
<dt>1890-1929</dt><dd><p>Romer</p>
</dd>
<dt>1930-1939</dt><dd><p>Coen</p>
</dd>
<dt>1940-present</dt><dd><p>BLS</p>
</dd>
</dl>

<p>Clearly, the more recent numbers should be more accurate.  
</p>
</dd>
</dl>



<h3>Details</h3>

<p><code>rownames(USGDPpresidents) = Year</code>
</p>


<h3>Author(s)</h3>

<p>Spencer Graves</p>


<h3>Source</h3>

<p>Louis Johnston and Samuel H. Williamson, 
&quot;What Was the U.S. GDP Then?&quot;, Measuring Worth, 
accessed 2015-09-08.  (NOTE:  This came from 
<code>https://www.measuringworth.org/usgdp/</code>.  
this web link generally works as of 2020-02-09 
but routinely returns a warning, e.g., 
&quot;SSL certificate problem&quot;.  The web site 
seems to be good but not maintained to
current security stqndards.)  
</p>
<p>Sarkees, Meredith Reid; Wayman, Frank (2010). 
<a href="http://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/COW-war">
&quot;The Correlates of War Project: COW War Data, 1816 - 
2007 (v4.0)&quot;</a>, accessed 2015-09-02.  
</p>
<p>Wikipedia, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States">&quot;List of wars involving the United States&quot;</a>, 
accessed 2015-09-13.  
</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_the_United_States#Historical_unemployment_rate_charts">Wikipedia, 
&quot;Unemployment in the United States&quot;</a>.  See also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Peace01234#Unemployment_Data">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Peace01234#Unemployment_Data</a>.  
Accessed 2016-07-08.  
</p>
<p>Stanley Lebergott (1964). Manpower in Economic Growth: 
The American Record since 1800. Pages 164-190. New York: 
McGraw-Hill.  Cited from 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_the_United_States#Historical_unemployment_rate_charts">Wikipedia, 
&quot;Unemployment in the United States&quot;</a>, accessed 2016-07-08.  
</p>
<p>Christina Romer (1986). &quot;Spurious Volatility in 
Historical Unemployment Data&quot;, The Journal of 
Political Economy, 94(1): 1-37.
</p>
<p>Robert M. Coen (1973) Labor Force and Unemployment in 
the 1920's and 1930's: A Re-Examination Based on 
Postwar Experience&quot;, The Review of Economics and 
Statistics, 55(1): 46-55. 
</p>
<p>The unemployment data since 1940 are from series 
LNS14000000 from the Current Population Survey.  These 
data are available as a monthly series from the 
<a href="https://www.bls.gov/cps/">Current Population Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics</a>. 
</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yttwebzine.com/yesterday/2013/10/28/75757/population_13_colonies_chart">Chuck Springston, 
&quot;Population of the 13 Colonies 1610-1790&quot;, 
October 28, 2013</a>
</p>


<h3>Examples</h3>

<pre>
##
## GDP, Presidents and Wars 
##
data(USGDPpresidents)
(wars &lt;- levels(USGDPpresidents$war))
nWars &lt;- length(wars)
plot(realGDPperCapita/1000~Year, 
     USGDPpresidents, log='y', type='l', 
     ylab='average annual income (K$)', 
     las=1)     
abline(v=c(1929, 1933, 1945), lty='dashed')
text(1930, 2.5, "Hoover", srt=90, cex=0.9)
text(1939.5, 30, 'FDR', srt=90, cex=1.1, col='blue')

# label wars
(logGDPrange &lt;- log(range(USGDPpresidents$realGDPperCapita, 
                    na.rm=TRUE)/1000))
(yrRange &lt;- range(USGDPpresidents$Year))
(yrMid &lt;- mean(yrRange))
for(i in 2:nWars){
  w &lt;- wars[i]
  sel &lt;- (USGDPpresidents$war==w)
  yrs &lt;- range(USGDPpresidents$Year[sel])
  abline(v=yrs, lty='dotted', col='grey')
  yr. &lt;- mean(yrs)
  w.adj &lt;- (0.5 - 0.6*(yr.-yrMid)/diff(yrRange))
  logy &lt;- (logGDPrange[1]+w.adj*diff(logGDPrange))
  y. &lt;- exp(logy)
  text(yr., y., w, srt=90, col='red', cex=0.5)
}

##
## CPI v. GDPdeflator
## 
plot(GDPdeflator~CPI, USGDPpresidents, type='l', 
     log='xy')
     
##
## Unemployment 
##
plot(unemployment~Year, USGDPpresidents, type='l')

</pre>


</body></html>
